One of the key fault lines between the different generations of Americans is taste in music. Whether jazz, country, classic rock, rap, or something else, each generation seems to have a genre or two they like and many more that they quite dislike, if not quite despise.
Among those that Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards dislikes is rap music, known mainly in the circles that dislike it for its vulgar and often violent lyrics, lack of sophisticated instrumental music, and a tone of anger that deeply pervades it.
Such is what Richards noted in an interview with the Telegraph, telling that UK publication, “I don’t really like to hear people yelling at me and telling me it’s music, AKA rap. I can get enough of that without leaving my house.”
And rap is not the only modern genre that he detests. He also cannot stand pop music, the other genre beloved by many young people. At first, he seemed hesitant to join the voices of many in his generation in criticizing pop, saying, “I don’t want to start complaining about pop music.”
But then he went ahead and did just that, saying, “It’s always been rubbish. I mean, that’s the point of it. They make it as cheap and as easy as possible and therefore it always sounds the same; there’s very little feel in it. I like to hear music by people playing instruments. That is, I don’t like to hear plastic synthesised Muzak, as it used to be known, what you hear in elevators, which is now the par for the course.”
Somewhat surprisingly given his image as a hard-bitten rocker, Richards added that he enjoys retreating into a good book to relax, saying, “I’ve always got a book on the go. It keeps me sane. And, you know, its possibly somewhere I hide. I’m not cut out to be a pop star, and I have to deal with it, but it is a pain in the ass sometimes, quite honestly. And so, now and again during the day, I just retreat into books.”
Doing a bit more to dispel his image as the hardest core of hard core classic rockers, he added, “There’s nobody like Keith Richards that would ever be alive. No way. He’s a one-dimensional thing. But you can’t buck the image.”
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So, it turns out the guitarist for the Rolling Stones, one of the greatest rock stars of all times, loves reading a good book, thinks his own public image is a bit ridiculous, and can’t stand rap or pop music because of how simplistic they sound! Who would have thought?
And those weren’t the only bombs he dropped. Commenting on the rivalry between the Stones and the Beatles, he struck a conciliatory note and said, “I don’t think John Lennon would have had much problem fitting into the Stones, or George, if you can imagine that sort of thing happening. We were the same generation, and we all loved the same music. When we first heard the Beatles, we were relieved that there was some other band in England on the same track that we were on. And within a few months, that track was the main track.”
Featured image credit: By Raph_PH – This file has been extracted from another file, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80238566